How to get pretty formatted ResponseEntity for Custom Response Model?

Question

When I am returning String for ResponseEntity it shows pretty formatted json in Postman but when I am returning CustomModel for ResponseEntity, it shows non formatted json.

Code 1:

@PostMapping("/json1")
ResponseEntity<String> getData1() {

    String result = "{\"name\":\"Alex\"}";
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(result);
}

Postman output 1:

{
  "name": "Alex"
}

Code 2:

class RestResp {

    public ResponseEntity<?> data = null;
}

@PostMapping("/json2")
ResponseEntity<RestResp> getData2() {

    String result = "{\"name\":\"Alex\"}";
    RestResp response = new RestResp();
    response.data = ResponseEntity.ok().body(result);
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(response);
}

Postman output 2:

{
    "data": {
        "headers": {},
        "body": "{\"name\":\"Alex\"}",
        "statusCode": "OK",
        "statusCodeValue": 200
    }
}

Why am I getting "{\"name\":\"Alex\"}" non formatted? How can I get the properly formatted json in Postman?

Answer 1

You can do it in many ways.

With dedicated object:

class Person {

    private String name;

    public Person(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

and

    RestResp response = new RestResp();
    response.data = ResponseEntity.ok().body(new Person("Alex"));
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(response);

Map it to json:

    String result = "{\"name\":\"Alex\"}";
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
    JsonNode node = mapper.readTree(result);

    RestResp response = new RestResp();
    response.data = ResponseEntity.ok().body(node);
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(response);

Or just use a map:

    Map<String,Object> map = new HashMap<>();
    map.put("name", "Alex");

    RestResp response = new RestResp();
    response.data = ResponseEntity.ok().body(map);
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(response);